"I don't bore myself," he had said.
"Bore her, then?"
"I try not to do that," said Jack with curdling equanimity. "But what are you driving at? Do you want me to mourn for you, to watch the shadow on your blind? That would be rather unconvincing to other people, would it not?"
"No; they would say I was tired of you."
Jack considered this.
"I don't want them to say anything about us at all," he answered, and again the sense of imperfect grip haunted the woman, and the sense of having been talking to a cook the man.
Nor was this the sum of Mildred's discomfort. She had amiably proposed not long ago to break with Marie, but now that the opportunity was ripe she felt herself simply unable to do so. There was a deficiency of force in her—moral or immoral, it matters not which—which was unable to stand up to the other. Also, she was dimly aware that people in general were watching her, looking at her rather as they had done when, now years ago, her hair had turned golden in a single night. But now the cause was not so tangible. Was it that she herself, not her hair only, was turning gray? Certainly she was conscious of a failure of power. It was in vain that she ate her many solid meals, or, as the whim took her, lived on varalettes and lean meat, vowing that this treatment made the whole difference to her; it was in vain she slept her solid six hours, drove a great deal in the fresh air, and kept her windows unwontedly open. People, the hundred diverting situations in which her friends daily found themselves, diverted her less, and she wondered whether the truth was, as fashion papers assured her, that the season was not very brilliant, or whether it was she who was losing the power to be amused. The thought of old age, a veritable bogey to one who has always felt young, sat daily by her in the empty seat of the victoria, and flapped in the wind-stirred blind of her bedroom at dark hours.
After she had left Jack that afternoon she had driven for an hour in the Park. The day was very fine, and the roadway and the path beside the Ladies' Mile were both crowded. She sat up very straight, as her custom was, in her victoria, the anæmic Yorkshire terrier by her side, and put up her veil so as both to see and be seen more distinctly. She was dressed, she knew, with extreme success, and it had been pleasant, at a block entering the Park, to see a gaunt female taking notes of the occupants of the carriages. Her own had by singular good luck paused exactly opposite this journalist, and she had out of the corner of her eye seen her examining and writing down with the facility of long practice the details of her costume: "Many smart people were in the Park, driving and walking last Thursday. Among others, I noticed Lady Brereton driving in her victoria, with her sweet little terrier by her side, extremely stylishly gowned. Her Saturday-till-Monday parties are still the attraction, and no wonder. On this occasion Lady Brereton had a new 'creation,' which I must describe. The bodice was of yellow silk, faced with orange colour; her bonnet," etc.
After this the crowd claimed her attention. Indeed, as "Diana" would say next week, "all the smart world" was about. Silly Billy, as usual, was taking his daily airing previous to clearing out the company at the "Deuce of Spades" at Bridge, talking to a nameless female, who appeared to want a lot of attention. Mildred just caught his eye, and, full of tact as ever, immediately looked away. Further on was Arthur Naseby, with hands wildly gesticulating, shrilly declaiming something of a clearly screaming nature to Blanche Devereux and a small and select company. He was standing close to the rails, and cried, "Dear lady! how are you?" to her, and the select company smiled their sweetest at her. Then, as her carriage passed at a foot's pace, she again heard his voice—in a different key and much lower. She could not catch the words, but felt sure that he was saying something about her. Then followed Jim Spencer alone. To him she waved her hand and beckoned him to the vacant seat in her victoria. But he, with seeming obtuseness, appeared not to understand, and went on his way. Then came Lady Davies, driving in the opposite direction, who passed without recognising her; soon after Kitty Paget, making violent love to her husband; and presently a tandem, which she recognised while yet some way off as Jack's. He was driving himself; a woman was seated by him. At the same moment the muscles of Mildred's face hauled up as by a crane all the paraphernalia of smiles, for the woman was her dear friend and Jack's wife. Immediately afterwards the smile had to be tied to the mast again, for close behind them was Lady Ardingly, "got up to kill," as Mildred angrily said to herself. She looked like a Turner landscape of the later period, with a lopsided sunset of auburn hair perched negligently on the top. Her mouth seemed to crack a little by way of recognition, and she passed in a flash of winking lacquer.
But Marie driving with Jack! That penultimate meeting was the most surprising. Did he really think she—Mildred—or, indeed, Marie, was the sort of woman to stand a ménage à trois, especially when one of the three was his wife? Then, like an earthquake wave laden with the dead slime of the stirred depths, the sense of her own impotence came over her. Only a fortnight ago she had airily told Jack that she was glad that concealment was at an end—that she would now break with Marie. But what if something else was at an end? What if her revolt at a ménage à trois was altogether ill-founded? Out of three people there were two mathematically possible arrangements à deux. In this case one would have to be left out.